Blood collection and resue thereof has become widely practiced during surgical operations. In some cases the blood is reinfused after collection in a bag system and in other instances, the blood is collected in a machine which cleans it prior to reinfusion.
A type of bag system in use in cases where direct reinfusion without machine cleaning is presently sold by Solco Basle Inc. of Rockland, Mass. under the trademark SOLCOTRANS. The SOLCOTRANS brand bag system includes a flexible bag in a rigid bottle which is adapted to operate to collect in and then reinfuse blood from the flexible bag and uses an aspirator handle with a filter in the handle or an external filter arrangement coupled to an aspirator handle with the filter then coupled by a tube to the bag.
It is desirable in orthopedic (bone) surgery to collect the blood from the wound and separate the blood from the bone chips prior to machine cleaning. While the Soloctrans brand bag system is acceptable for use in these circumstances, i.e., for use in conjunction with machine cleaning, it has now been determined herein that for machine cleaning applications a more simplied blood collection system and thus a less expensive system could be used. This application discloses such a system.
To show the state of the art, reference should be had to U.S. Pat. No. 4,573,992 and the patents cited therein.